Yesterday, Concord Hospital announced who will assume the role of chief executive officer after longtime leader Mike Green steps down in January. Robert Steigmeyer, CEO of Geisinger-Community Medical Center, was chosen from a national pool of applicants after a nine-month search.

“Everyone is sad to see Mike go . . . but we want him to be happy and we’re very excited that we feel we have a great CEO to follow in his footsteps,” said Muriel Schadee, chairwoman of the hospital’s board of trustees and leader of the CEO search committee.

Steigmeyer, who was not available for comment yesterday, became president and CEO of Community Medical Center Healthcare System in Scranton, Pa., in July 2010. In February 2012, he helped lead the transition as the hospital joined Geisinger Health System, which serves more than 2.6 million people in central and northeastern Pennsylvania.

The merger was also the beginning of an $80 million expansion that is still under way.

Before his time in Pennsylvania, Steigmeyer served as senior vice president of operations and finance at Northwest Hospital and Medical Center and was a health care management consultant at ECG Management Consultants, both in Seattle.

Green, 63, has been CEO of Concord Hospital for 20 years, overseeing a period of exponential growth and whiplash-inducing change.

Under his leadership, the hospital built and opened the Payson Center for Cancer Care; added the Orthopaedic Institute at Concord Hospital, the Family Health Center and family practice residency program, a new emergency department and Granite Ledges assisted living facility; and expanded the Pillsbury Medical Office Building.

With 2,650 full-time employees, Concord Hospital is the city’s largest private employer.

Geisinger-Community Medical Center employs more than 1,500 professional and support staff.

The Pennsylvania hospital had $172 million in revenue and $169 million in expenses in 2011; that same year, Concord Hospital had almost $415 million in revenue and $388 million in expenses, according to the organizations’ respective tax documents.

That year, Steigmeyer was paid about $599,000 in compensation and benefits; Green received $831,223 in salary and benefits.

Steigmeyer was the unanimous choice of the search commission, after two finalists met with more than 80 members of the hospital community, Schadee said.

She said several factors influenced the choice: “the variety of his experience, having worked as a consultant, an operating officer, leader of a community hospital and part of a large group with Geisinger.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that she sees a specific need on the hospital’s horizon for Steigmeyer’s experience in mergers or expansions, she said.

“There’s no real specific growth area we’re looking at. . . . Everyone has to be open to opportunities, but that wasn’t why we were looking at him and is not something Concord Hospital is considering,” Schadee said.

“Health care is in a state of flux, and we appreciated the variety of his experience.

“When we were comparing him to other candidates, he had done his homework and could see what Mike and the whole team had been able to achieve, how committed the hospital is to the community and vice versa,” she said.

Trustee Tom Brown, who also recently led the board of the Concord Hospital Trust, said one of his top priorities was that the hospital’s next leader be committed to the community-focused culture developed under Green’s tenure.

“We didn’t know if we’d have the opportunity to find another Mike Green, but maybe we do,” he said.

When he arrived in Scranton in 2010, Steigmeyer told the local newspaper that he was inspired to enter health care by his father, a pediatrician who made house calls.

As a hospital systems chief, “I can touch the lives of thousands of people who may never know my name,” Steigmeyer said, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune. “My father did it one patient at a time.”

He also told the paper that after several years working for consultants and dropping into health systems across the country as an interim executive, he was not interested anymore in being a short-term fixer or proxy for a future buyer.

Schadee said she hopes that attitude carries into his time in Concord, too.

When asked whether the community could expect Steigmeyer to stay as long as Green has, she laughed and said, “I would hope so.”

“He hopes this is his last job. We do, too,” she said. “Everyone is going into this with a long-term view.”

Green said he doesn’t know yet exactly what he’ll do after handing over his title, and he doesn’t expect to have much time to think about it until January.

“To some extent it’s a little bit awkward because the end is near, but at the same time, I’ve got a job to do,” he said.

“There can’t be any such thing as a lame duck,” he said. “There are moving parts that don’t stop, though it’s not that there are any big decisions that we know we need to make over the next three months. The preference would be to have Bob engaged when there are decisions to make in the future, anyway.”

(Sarah Palermo can be reached at 369-3322 or spalermo@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @SPalermoNews.)